


Crescendo devoto

by citron_ella



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Cello, Crowley Cannot Sit In Chairs Properly (Good Omens), Crowley has Trauma from the Fall (Good Omens), Fade to Black, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Musical Instruments, Not Beta Read, Singing, Trauma, angels sing, romanticisiation of string instruments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2021-01-15 00:35:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21244598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/citron_ella/pseuds/citron_ella
Summary: He played one note, the low sound of an open g, and that was all he had to do because all at once the sound was right. The whole body of the instrument sang out, and the sonorous vibration spread through him from each point of contact, humming through his body, warm and deep and whole.When an angel falls, they lose their ability to sing in the choirs of God. Crowley was at peace with this- until he heard Aziraphale's true voice.





	Crescendo devoto

Angels sang. 

They had done it before the birth of birdsong; before apes and whales and insects. Before Eden. Before Earth. Before sound, as most things knew it. There was a reason the bible made reference to  _ choirs _ of them. It was innate, deep and primordial as the bones in their bodies, carved into their being before the conception of DNA. 

Angels sang, and demons did nothing like it.

So after six millennia, Crowley was unprepared. 

Humans were good with music, admittedly. They’d made a great deal of it, and by sheer force of statistics they’d come up with some gems, in the infinite monkeys/typewriters sense. Human music was beautiful, but this was different. This reached between the woven threads of the cosmos, and strummed in sympathy with his soul. 

Something inside him cracked, like dropped ceramic.

Regret wasn’t the right word, exactly. There wasn’t an accurate one. Language lacked the ability to fully stretch itself around the experience of hearing something— not anywhere near the full potential, one lone voice half-humming its way through a hymn— and being thrust back into golden memory. It ached like nothing in creation. 

Crowley left his bed. Drifted aimlessly, consumed with yearning. The urge was there. An itch to echo the notes, to raise his absent voice in reply; to meet the notes of the familiar melody with the echo of his own. 

Aziraphale was calling out to the universe, and he couldn’t answer.

The polished hardwood floor was cold beneath his feet, but comfortable compared to the concrete of his own home. It was like being eaten alive; distant rosy memory of music. Memory of being shining new and soft and curious, still able to sing the praises of the Almighty. The unity of chorus, embracing him. 

He didn’t want to go back to heaven. Never would; the place was full of pricks. But that was a rational deflection of an emotional sting; something that cut back through all the layers of him and hit when he was newly made. 

  
Six thousand years of thick skin, stripped in an instant. He felt  _ flayed _ .

When Crowley reached the kitchen, he had to grip the doorframe to stay steady. Until the moment when Aziraphale  _ noticed _ , and  _ stopped _ , and that was almost worse. Songs ended. Resolved their refrain. This one hadn’t, because of him. 

“Crowley?” all at once Aziraphale was upon him, close, the warm pad of a thumb brushing away the tear that had begun to fall. “What on earth is wrong?" 

Later, he would look back on this moment with shame; on collapsing into Aziraphale’s arms  _ weeping _ like the day he’d fallen— but in the moment? In those sparse and shameless seconds, in the time before he caught himself, when he could  _ mourn _ ?

That touch became the world to him. 

Human music was an interesting thing. 

The first instrument was the voice. The simple vibration of vocal folds and air. Everything with lungs had a voice, and probably some stuff that hadn’t got lungs too— but instruments, those were unique. Ever since the first haunting notes of lithophones, humanity had had something. A leg up on the angels, almost— song outside themselves. 

And that had lead to… this place.

On some subconscious level, Crowley had always assumed that music shops would be  _ loud _ . Not the library-like silence that consumed this one, the sound of the bell on the door loud in the sleepy atmosphere. It looked almost like a place Aziraphale would make, if slightly neater— crammed to the gills with hardwood and hushed lighting, shelves heaving under the weight of hardback books of sheet music. The air was warm, perfumed with coffee and rosin. There were only a few other customers; two poncy-looking schoolkids and their parents, picking out a violin

Aziraphale stood between him and the bulk of it, clearly comfortable amongst all the varnished wood and flutes with fiddly bits. Crowley had no such bravado; his experience of instruments was limited to the sort of thing you’d see towering on stage overtop a mosh pit. None of… this. 

“Do you see anything you like?” it was a gentle probing question, just sharp enough to burst the bubble of reverie. 

“Give me a minute to  _ look _ , angel.” 

Everything looked very… delicate wasn’t the right word, but outside his scope at very least. Crowley wasn’t one for objects like these; nothing like the elegant arc of a violin’s scroll; the curving cut-out f-holes. He approached the wall of violins and violas, stared, scratching his chin and struggling to look disinterested. The strings were so thin. So fine. In the warm light, they looked like spun silver. 

He did pick one, eventually. A solid-looking thing, big enough that he wouldn’t worry too much about breaking it, but agile enough for expression.

The cello was surprisingly light, even in its hard-shelled case. Which was good, because they had to wrangle the bloody thing into the bentley, and as beautiful as it was, it was regrettably cumbersome, and it was something of a miracle that it could be squeezed into the back seat. 

The first time Crowley practiced, it was in the dead of night. Which may have been rather inconsiderate towards the neighbours, but he’d been waiting for the confidence, and didn’t want to miss his chance. 

He laid the cello down on its back and carefully unbuckled the case. It had the energy of anticipation, all the  _ steps _ , undoing the snap between the handles on the case’s side, then unzipping all the way around. The case was big and sturdy, and had it been hollow, could have held a human body. 

Inside, the instrument nestled in rich green velvet, strapped in at the neck with a band of velcro. Strapped into a special indentation in the lid was the bow, warm-coloured wood with the horsehair hanging loose. He was puzzled by this, for a moment, before he flipped to the first page of  _ all for strings  _ and saw the diagrams on how to tighten it. 

Aziraphale had seen to the… paraphernalia. Books and music stand and such, and a strange little circular thing that was apparently an ‘end pin stopper’. 

An experimental plucking found all four strings to be perfectly in tune. 

The digital pitch pipe/metronome stood sentinel on the coffee table as Crowley set up the music stand. Opened the book to the first page with actual  _ songs _ . And sat down to play. 

It was extremely, extremely difficult at first. 

Aziraphale had made sure there were little circular stickers on the fingerboard where his hand should go, and it was a struggle to match them. You could do a lot with latent celestial power, but you couldn’t miracle muscle memory. The good thing was that Crowley didn’t have to sleep.

Or. it seemed like a good thing, at first. 

The sun rose, and set, and rose again, and he was still nervously plucking out nursery rhymes. The instrument felt delicate against him, like holding a human being between his knees. It was hollow on the inside, and he felt like it would shatter if he let it slip.

When he tried the bow, he gave up almost immediately. The sound he coaxed from the construction of wood and metal and glue was unworthy of the effort it took to make it, reedy and thin, like the instrument was whining at his disrespect. 

He packed the thing away, after that. He’d been labouring under the delusion that this could have been used as a  _ nice surprise _ , because clearly Aziraphale wanted this. Wanted him to play some form of instrument. Crowley abandoned the cello in its case, his skin pricking with annoyance, and stalked out of the room. He had plants to threaten.

“How is the music going?” 

It was a blow of a question, and Aziraphhale asked it with total nonchalance, eyes still trained on the creme brulee he was cracking with a spoon. Crowley almost choked on his coffee. 

“As well as you could expect, I suppose.” 

This conversation was a ballet; tempting and taunting with words, each movement delicate. 

“Oh.” the spoon broke the surface of the pudding. Aziraphale finally looked up at him. “Would you like a hand?” 

The instinct was of course to say  _ no _ ; because this should have been childs’ play to him, making music. It was quite literally more natural than breathing. 

Or, it would have been to an angel.

Crowley nodded. 

They were out of the habit of distance, comfortably melting into each other's personal space as they ascended the stairs. But Crowley still wanted to get the instrument out alone. The ritual of removing it from the case felt too intimate, somehow— and to be perfectly honest, he was a little bit afraid of cocking it up. 

When he called Aziraphale through to the box room he’d set aside for practice, he was met with immediate disdain. Or, that was what it  _ felt  _ like. Aziraphale stood in the doorway, pursing his lips and…  _ examining _ . 

“Sit up straighter, dear.” 

Crowley did so. There had been a wordless exchange of trust, somewhere. 

“I’m much more of a violinist myself, but…” Aziraphale stepped forward, and stooped to reach for Crowley’s bowing hand. It was readily offered, more like a force than an action; like electromagnetism. It felt pathetic, to need this. 

But Aziraphale’s fingers were soft and warm as they shaped his, and the weight of the bow shifted to somewhere more comfortable. He was buoyed by hope and the glow of electric light in curls. He could sustain that grip much better, and when Aziraphale lowered the bow to the strings, there seemed to be no other option than  _ trying.  _

“You’re being so  _ careful _ .” Aziraphale sighed, at the first awkward note. “Relax into it, and the weight of the bow will make more friction.” 

Crowley ducked his head beneath the weight of Aziraphale’s eyes on him, and obeyed. 

He played  _ one _ note, the low sound of an open g, and that was all he had to do because all at once the sound was right. The whole body of the instrument sang out, and the sonorous vibration spread through him from each point of contact, humming through his body, warm and deep and whole. 

Aziraphale smiled in a wonderful way. The expression spread like dawn, and it was mirrored by the glow of pride in Crowley’s chest. 

He’d made his angel happy. 

“I have an arrangement,” Aziraphale said, frantically pulling folded sheet music from a pocket. “Of Ode To Joy, for violoncello and violin.” 

He held the paper out, the implied question hanging in the air between them, aflame with tension— it was sucking the oxygen out of the room. 

Ode to Joy was one of his favourite songs; he’d gone specially to Germany to see it performed back in the early days. He’d followed after Beethoven for it. Those notes had sparked a dedication that lasted to the modern day. And now…

It wasn’t until much later— the early hours of the morning, once Aziraphale had left, and the world was all soft moonlight and the sounds of the sleeping city— that Crowley even dared to look. The music was printed on thick, rich, cream-coloured paper, if it had been printed at all, and not somehow inscribed. It was heavy in his hands, as if it was given weight by the sheer magnitude of its potential.

Crowley unfolded the sheets slowly. Studied the staves within. The paper held its shape, creased deeply, trying to curl back in on itself— how long had it been like this? Held in waiting? 

The part was blessedly simple; he could have sight-read it with no prelude. Getting it right was the thing that mattered. He wanted to pour his every atom into each note; and when he stumbled haltingly through for the first time, he could hear the places where the melody would go. 

He yearned for that moment.

When it would all come together, the parts entangling like fingers, weaving together like hands clasped. 

And he wanted more than anything for that moment to be soon. 

So he re-rosined his bow, and got to the work of practice.

The first time they played together, it was remarkably inelegant. 

It was a rainy day in London, and Crowley had dragged his cello all the way to the bookshop, the little wheels on the case bumping over every single uneven flagstone between the road and the doorstep. They’d set up in the flat upstairs, in the room that was theoretically an office but practically a collection of trinkets that happened to include a mahogany desk. The acoustics were, paradoxically, better there. 

Crowely watched, leaning on his cello, as Aziraphale rosined his bow and tuned his violin. It was a beautiful process, with none of the halting half-starts there were when Crowley did it. Just practiced ease. Somehow much more real. 

“One, two, three, four!” Aziraphale counted them in, and surged confidently into the music. 

Crowley struggled to keep pace; almost immediately he lost his place in counting, fell away from the one-two-three-four within the space of a few bars, tripping up on sudden semiquavers. Aziraphale had the grace to stop with him. 

It was a little bit embarrassing, to be faced with such skill.

But still, it was wonderful. To be carried like this, cocooned in the triumphant notes. Finding the hardest parts; the worst mistakes— and slowly unspooling them, until bar by bar it began to make sense.

They practiced together weekly, alone daily. Slowly, carefully, Crowley fit his hands around the shapes of the song, the weighting of each bow, the dancing of his fingers between strings. The pattern of it grew familiar, almost routine; by the end of it he could have played his minimal part in his sleep. Calluses formed on his fingertips.The notes had settled into his skin, into the movements of his wrists and shoulders, how he held his hands in his sleep. 

They had become like home. 

And when at last, they performed, it was like every movement was a reflex.

They had an audience of one and other and a waiting cassette, a record to be made of this moment, warts and all. It felt necessary to the both of them. To embed this in touchable media like something caught in amber, the background noise of rain and traffic, the inevitable unsightly prelude of preparation. 

It was the first song of their side. 

Crowely was by far familiar with their set now. He could fling himself any which way across his chair, prop the cello in the same sort of languid slump, and melt into the music itself. Into the harmony where their parts converged; when the melody was made of him and Aziraphale both. Lose himself in the certainty of each beat, and the contrast he could provide to the tune the violin was carrying. The voice of a cello was deep and full and human-like; like crying. Like singing. It looked yearningly to the melody, an octave down. 

He adored the underscore it gave. 

It wasn’t the same.

It was a harmony of physics; air on air, the harmonics of human-shaped bodies and the impact they made on nitrogen and oxygen and carbon dioxide. It was nowhere near the same. Not even in the same order of magnitude. But as the music thrummed through him, reached its warm fingers up into the eaves, he realised. 

It wasn’t the same. 

It was better. 

And maybe it was bad for instruments to be flung aside like that, near enough dropped. The violin made a rather alarming noise of protest when it hit the carpet. 

But at that point, they were beyond caring, and the tape ended with soft, adoring laughter— which would someday herald the memory of fingers entangling with soft curly hair— and a clatter as the recorder was jostled from its place on the desk. 


End file.
